


Collide

by firecrackerx



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2856218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecrackerx/pseuds/firecrackerx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are galaxies seen from Earth. Delicately structured, impossibly complex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collide

Perry shoulders the door and steps outside carrying a plate, her feet making the old wood of the diner's porch moan. The trees surrounding the place look black in the gloomy darkness; beyond them, the menacing silhouettes of the mountains are barely shaped against the night sky. The air smells sharp and cold. LaFontaine is sitting on an old wooden bench nailed to the wall, leaning back and looking at the dark sky, black like spilled ink. An ancient lamp blinks in and out of life over their head; Perry can see their breath forming little puffs of mist in the chilly air.

"Aren't you cold?"

"It's fine, I wanted to give those two some space. And you can see a lot of stars from here."

"So you are star-gazing?"

"Yeah, I guess. Look," they point up, "it's a little cloudy, but you can see so many of them. Makes me think of outer space awesomeness," they sighed.

"Oh, no. When you start talking about clusters, nebulae and supernovas I can never understand a word of what you say," Perry murmurs, looking up. Her breath makes puffs of mist too, little balls of smoke that tremble in front of her eyes and against the dark sky before dissolving.

She realizes what she said was only half a truth. Perry thinks about galaxies a lot. 

"What do you have there?" asks LaFontaine. Perry steps closer until the battered lamp illuminates the plate in her hands. "Oh, damn! Peppermint fudge? Wait… ew, no Perr, we've eaten people three hours ago and I am never eating again in my life," they say reaching for one piece and shoving it in their mouth.

"I see."

"Oh no, no, these are too good... Is this what you were doing in the kitchen earlier?"

"Yes, but I had to leave them in the fridge for a couple of hours..."

"You are amazing," they say taking the plate from her and holding her hand to pull her towards the bench by their side. Perry sits down with a smile:

"It's just a three-ingredient recipe..." she murmurs, trying not to look as pleased as she feels and thanking the low illumination for hiding her blushing face. "Happy holidays, weirdo."

LaFontaine smiles at her, a big smile, and Perry can see little Susan LaFontaine in it, and years of smiles in its shadow. It fades away fast. LaFontaine's big smiles are scarce, but Perry doesn't really mind. She has always felt proud when getting one, one of the huge ones that are always a little crooked and make their eyes soft.

"I don't have anything to give to you, though..." they start, trying to fit two pieces of fudge in their mouth and still managing to look sincerely sorry. Perry smiles:

"You don't need to. I'm just grateful that there's someone in the world who knows me so well," she looks back towards the door, suddenly ashamed that Laura and Carmilla could have heard her. The words don't feel right to say out loud to anyone except LaFontaine. The door is closed, but she lowers her voice a little bit and looks to her own knees, that have moved to touch each other. "So let's make that the present you are giving me back."

She waits, but no sounds come except those of the night around them and the breeze blowing cold air against her face. When she looks up, LaFontaine is fighting to swallow too much peppermint fudge to answer her. Perry clicks her tongue and produces a napkin from her sleeve, pressing it against their mouth.

"...how long has that been in your sleeve...?" asks LaFontaine around the fudge and through the napkin.

"Will you swallow already!? I was trying to have a moment!"

LaFontaine wrestles the napkin away from Perry while she is distracted grabbing the plate from their lap that almost falls to the floor and they both end up laughing in a tangle of winter clothing and red hair.

After a moment, LaFontaine is finally able to swallow and take a deep breath. They look at Perry with a sigh and the last traces of laughter in their lips:

"I can't give you that as a present, because you have given me the same already. So I'd still owe you one. More than one, actually. You know everything about me too, but you also take care of me after I hurt myself."

"You do that too."

"But you don't hurt yourself nearly as much."

"It doesn't matter. You took care of me last time I had a fever, didn't you? You even made me soup. I thought you would make the kitchen explode, poison me, or both..." says Perry with a little laugh.

"But it was delicious, right? You are the only one who knows I can cook."

"You are the only one who knows I can cook in... unusual ways."

"And you are the only one who has seen all my tattoos."

"Well, you taught me how to ride a bicycle."

"So? You taught me how to dance."

"You already knew how to dance!"

"Yeah," LaFontaine smiles fondly. "I just wanted an excuse for you to..."

They look at each other, their breathes mixing in the cold air for a moment. Then they look away, Perry hiding her cold hands in the long sleeves of her sweater and LaFontaine placing the plate by their side on the bench, silence thickening around them.

"I think you are the only one who knows I can make card tricks..." says Perry after a moment, trying to chase away the sudden awkwardness.

"...and I am the only one who knows you use them to cheat, too."

"I do not!"

"I am surprised you pulled a napkin out of your sleeve instead of five aces."

"At least it's card games and not a test."

"That happened once! Once! And the system I used was more complicated than the test itself! It was a matter of time, not laziness!" says LaFontaine. Perry bites her lip to hide a smile. "What? What is it?"

Perry looks up at the sky. A black slate and a few drops of shining light among grey clouds. But when LaFontaine looks at it, she thinks, they can see much more. Unknown dimensions. Hidden depths. Outer space awesomeness.

But how does she look like to other people? A raging lunatic with maternal instincts who bakes and cleans too much, who tries to meddle in everybody's life, who tries too hard? Do they see anything else? What about LaFontaine? Do they see anything in LaFontaine apart from that hazardous student who kept walking into the green zones of Silas to snatch plants and samples and didn't smile too much? But they are so much more. They are galaxies, seen from Earth. Delicately structured, impossibly complex. And they have been holding hands for so long, side by side, looking at each other's vastness, observing the movement of planets, the deaths and births of stars, the dark corners and expanses of colorful bright lights.

Perry looks at LaFontaine and passes her hand slowly over their head:

"I think I will keep the present," she says softly, loving the new feeling of short hair against the palm of her hand. "Not just you knowing me, but we both knowing each other so well."

"Well," they whisper, looking at her, "that's changing a little bit, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. We are changing. Maybe we're growing up. I am discovering things about myself I didn't even imagine. You are also changing," they gave her a little smile. "You didn't think about it twice before grabbing a broom earlier to go against that crazy witch. Pretty badass for the Lola Perry I used to hang out with a couple of years ago."

The deafening roar of thunder cracks over them and rain starts falling around the porch before Perry can think of an answer. LaFontaine jumps on their feet and takes Perry's hand:

"I don't know if I am the only person who knows you hate storms."

Perry squeezes their hand and nods.

They both run towards the door where LaFontaine swears, runs back to the bench and grabs the plate of peppermint fudges before stepping into the warmth of the diner.

 

 

A couple of hours later, after checking no pitchforks are wandering near and feeling exhausted, Laura and Carmilla find the lights and switch them off while Perry and LaFontaine unpack a Perry approved number of blankets Silas will probably miss. Carmilla manages to combine a few of them and some stools into a bizarre fort that Laura is all to happy to slip into.

"We are under a damn roof and getting inside a tent is suspicious and gross," says LaFontaine loud enough to be answered by one of Carmilla's hands emerging from the fort with a finger up. They roll their eyes, but after a moment they grab a couple of blankets and walk as far from the homemade fort as possible, towards one of the booths.

"What are you doing?" whispers Perry in the darkness as LaFontaine covers the booth with one of the blankets like a little roof, securing it in several points.

"You sleep here," they say lowering their voice. "Carmilla will notice if someone approaches while we sleep... I hope... so we can't pull down the blinds in case they come again, but in here you won't have to see the lightning and the wind outside and stuff. Sorry I can't do anything about the thunder..."

"We should share it," she says quickly. The rain hits the roof and Perry wonders if their maps still work or their galaxies have shifted so much, so fast, that they are no longer side by side but about to clash while she tries to hold on to memories of childhood. LaFontaine nods, takes the other blanket and lowers their head to enter the booth, sitting against the wall.

"Goodnight, Laura. Goodnight, Carmilla," Perry says towards the gloomy diner.

"Goodnight, Perry," comes Laura's voice, and then Carmilla's:

"Night."

"You could keep watch so we don't get murdered in our sleep, that would be a present to remember," calls LaFontaine from under the blanketed booth.

"I'll do my best," purrs Carmilla from the other end of the diner. "But as a victim of murder myself, I must say going in your sleep doesn't sound like the worst option."

"L, when you get a moment and your mouth is free tell your girlfriend we are trying to avoid all murder options, not pick the best one."

Perry sighs and slides over the seat towards LaFontaine while the bickering continues for a few minutes. Carmilla and LaFontaine miss having someone to exercise the sharpest side of their wits with, so they have started to do it regularly against each other like restless siblings. They finally say goodnight while Perry notices the blanket over their head blocks the view to the window and makes the space warm and strangely welcoming for a place where she is about to spend the night sleeping while sitting up. Her body finds LaFontaine's in the darkness and they fit with the ease of years of sharing beds and couches. Their arm moves around her shoulders, bringing the second blanket around both of them.

"Comfortable?" they whisper. Perry nods softly.

As they sit very close, tightly wrapped in the same blanket and listening to the rain, they look at each other for a moment and Perry knows LaFontaine was right. It doesn't mind how many things she used to know about them and the galaxy they used to be, because the maps in her heart, her carefully drawn charts, are useless now. They have changed. She herself has changed. Their balance has shifted and she didn't shift with it. At some point, just standing by LaFontaine's side was not enough and Perry was too busy clinging to her memories to notice.

Sometimes side by side is not enough. Sometimes, in the deep dark, galaxies clash, pulled to each other, out of control. Little galaxies disappear devoured by massive ones or fuse together irregularly, losing their shape and getting lost in the change. And sometimes, when the circumstances are right, galaxies collide and merge, finding their shape inside each other like fingers interlocking blindly.

In the narrow, warm booth, surrounded by darkness, uncertainty and the terrifying rumble of thunder, LaFontaine and Perry kiss with their eyes closed and see merging stars behind their eyelids.


End file.
